ZenPacks : Application Profiles : Comments

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:08:53 GMT

hi, could you make more example on how to use this zenpack... why is usefoul and when?

i read carefully the article but i don't understand why i can need this zenpack

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:46:35 GMT

The "quick" answer would be to say that I anticipate it being useful for managing large groups of devices, user groups, and alerts.

We currently montior about 1200 or so devices in zenoss now, and I use the Systems and Groups properties fairly extensively to define alert filters that determine who gets alerted about what and when. The problem is that, at the end of the day, I can't really get more granular than this. For example, we have separate groups to deal with "Sysadmin" issues (like disk space) and "application" issues (like glassfish app servers). Since a given devices will be a member of both the "app support" and "IT support" groups, though, both groups will get all alerts for that device regardless of whether it's a "disk space" or "application" type event.

Basically in my opinion there's still to much alerting going on, and much gets ignored because its not really relevant to a given individual at a given time.

It's possible to get more granular with the alert filters, but at the cost of much time and effort (and in my case probable mistakes), so my hope is that these "application profiles" will bundle up much of the work that would be required to achieve what I want, which is more targeted alerting (getting the right info to the right person at the right time, and cutting out extraneous info).

Also, by "profiling" devices and managing their groups, this zenpack will help manage the System/Group organizers for each device, based on whether or not they meet characteristics...that way if a given device is remodeled, and the modeler finds a new application installed/running, the device can be added to the System/Group defined in the profile.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:55:17 GMT

I realize that it's confusing, and the fact that it's taking so long to explain highlights that...

One reason is that in some sense everthing that this zenpack does is "gravy" to the basic "profile" functionality. That is because this zenpack was created as a prerequisite to another I'm working on.

There is a ticketing system called "Numara Footprints" that we use here at work. It has a built in "CMDB" capability, that is user-definable. In theory the CMDB can be used to link issue tickets to various CMDB items, which should give some idea of affected services. In theory this can also be used to gauge the risk of change.

I've come up with a schema that I thing maps well between Zenoss and Footprints, but I realized early on that some massive reorganization and increase in accurate classification of the Zenoss config would be required for this to have any chance at success. This Zenpack was built to address the classification issues (by the creation of rule sets). After it was largely built I realized that it would also be useful for managing the users/groups/alerts, so I added that functionality.

Actually as of today I am largely finished with the second "CMDB" zenpack (at least a beta stage anyways). Unfortunately in many ways it's much more complex than this one and would take a lot of documentation and diagrams to explain (even to myself haha) -- well maybe it's not that bad.

Does anyone use Numara Footprints BTW?

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:04:30 GMT

We're using Footprints as a ticketing system, for central I.T. at Marshall U.

I tried out your application profiles Zenpack, and couldn't quite get it to work right. After I created my first profile, as a test, it just stopped loading that overview of available profiles.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:01:20 GMT

Good to know you're using Footprints, do you have a dev server you'd be willing to test out the CMDB functionality with?

I'm not sure what went wrong with the profile...can you elaborate on the error? did you see any particular error? what version of Zenoss, etc?

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:06:48 GMT

I think i may have found the error...are you by chance adding a ruleset with a space in the name? I'm having that problem myself. I found/fixed that one early on, but the bug seems to have crept back into the code somehow...i'll fix it and release an update. In the meantime, if you want to play around with it, try creating a ruleset with no space in the name.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:24:31 GMT

There's not really a visible error per se. When I run 'zenpack --install', I do get a warning message:

2010-10-18 11:13:05,440 WARNING zen.ToManyRelationshipBase: Tried to delete object id 'ModuleMenu' but didn't find it on /zport/dmd/zenMenus
2010-10-18 11:13:05,440 WARNING zen.ToManyRelationshipBase: Tried to delete object id 'RuleDefinitions' but didn't find it on /zport/dmd/zenMenus
2010-10-18 11:13:05,440 WARNING zen.ToManyRelationshipBase: Tried to delete object id 'RuleModule' but didn't find it on /zport/dmd/zenMenus

Its just seems like it takes forever to load the profile views on a ruleset.

As for Footprints, I believe we're using it only as a ticketing system. I don't believe we have CMDB modules for our Footprints system.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:26:16 GMT

I know the first errors you listed (the warnings) -- I'm not sure how to get rid of them, but they do no harm...

Per the second, how many devices do you have?

Joseph

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:19:51 GMT

We're monitoring about 300 devices.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:16:17 GMT

Eric,

Thanks for your help w/testing...i've found the source of the slowness that you were talking about...I need to rewrite and test a few methods but i'll post an update soon.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:45:31 GMT

So can we summarize this as a sort of auto-classifier that can assign Group tags, System tags, and user group tags to a device (as the /System and /Group "organizers" are really just a way to view a set of tags assigned to a device), and at the same time a convenience method for building Alerting rules/filters while you have those three in front of you?

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:41:00 GMT

Wow great summary wish i would have thought of it that way

Acutally i'll have another update to it soon that will be a much bigger speed increase...getting rid of some of loops through the whole object database.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:21:02 GMT

When are the rules actually applied? IE. Is there a set schedule on which rules are applied, or do you need to manually invoke them.

So if I create a new ruleset, I can of course manully invoke the build memberships now, but if I dont manually do that will it eventually happen on its own, or is the only way for it to fire the ruleset to manually invoke it, either standalone or in the contenxt of "Build All Memberships"

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:29:47 GMT

Right now it's manually applied only for 2 reasons...first, you're one of 2 brave souls who are using this (myself included) so far, so I want to watch out for unintended consequences. I've tested it pretty thoroughly myself, but I'm sure there are things I've missed. Second, I don't yet know how to write a daemon process, so I'll have to learn that first.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:31:58 GMT

Undeerstandable, and I don't necessarily disagree. I was thinking short term I could just use a cron job and hit the right call (not exactly sure what that looks like yet) via the API to invoke this.

I think the "automagicness" can be danergous and you'd want to be really sure its what you wanted.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:33:47 GMT

Exactly...until I'm sure of the consequences of the rulesets being applied in a consistent way over time, I don't want to automated it yet...you can do the "rebuild all memberships" at the root of an organizer, though, so you don't have to do it at each ruleset.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:50:56 GMT

I would not guess that there are only 2 people using this right now. This page has 1,167 Views, your ZenPack has won the grand prize in the Summer ZenPacks contest (judges installed and voted for it), and I can personally atest that one of our most skilled engineers told me that your ZenPack is amazing and different than any other ZenPack he has seen. Congrats - a lot of people love the work you have done here. Dont forget to contact me via the method on the winners blog post, to claim your prize!

BTW, if you remind me offline, I'll try to get some info about daemon creation out to you.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:12:11 GMT

I hate to sound like I'm nagging (I'm not, I'm totally digging this ZenPack), but would it be possible to get a "Bind All Templates" menu option of the root, just like "rebuild all memberships"?

For me the huge win is the automatic template bindings, so I'd love to re-bind all in a single click.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:33:28 GMT

Wow I'm very honored and happy that it's been recognized...thank you very much for your kind words!

I didn't think i stood a chance against the likes of Egor, I'm glad be considered alongside him. In fact, when I don't know how to do something, I usually try to find out if he did it first (he usually has).

Thanks again I'll contact you via the post as soon as i can decide which of the cool prizes I should take...

Joseph

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:35:10 GMT

not nagging at all actually...you have a lot of good ideas, and are also reminding me of things i meant to do but forgot to do...i truly appreciate the feedback! I thought about doing the top-level template rebindings, but either got lazy or forgot...i'll definitely add that in.

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:02:11 GMT

Just curious to know if someone can help me figure out how to either export my rulesets via DMD (web or console), or how to change my code to not wipe out all rulesets when upgrading the zenpack?

Thanks in advance,

Joseph

RE: Application Profiles

community@zenoss.org — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 02:04:39 GMT

You ever figure this out? I ran into the "lost" rulesets today while upgrading from 1.3 to 1.5